At least 14 people died and nearly 80 were wounded in deadly bomb blasts outside two churches in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday morning, marking one of the country’s worst-ever attacks on its Christian minority.

A Pakistani Taliban splinter group called Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the twin explosions, which occurred just minutes apart during Sunday services at the churches in Lahore’s Youhanabad neighborhood, Reuters reports.

A policeman and a private security guard were reported to be among those killed in the blasts. Al Jazeera quoted a police spokesman as saying that suicide bombers were behind the attacks, which came just weeks after a suicide bombing outside a Lahore police compound killed several people.

The bombings on Sunday were followed by protests by Lahore’s Christian community about the lack of security. Local media reported that, shortly after the attacks, an angry crowd lynched two men suspected of involvement in…

Two weeks after a Taliban attack on a local school killed 147 people, 136 of them children, the Pakistani city of Peshawar is still raw with grief and fear.

The capital city of the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (or the North-West Frontier Province as it used to be known) often finds itself in the front line of the 10-year-old Taliban insurgency and has witnessed appalling bloodshed.

But the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar surpassed even those standards of horror. It was the worst single terrorist attack in the history of a country that, according to the Global Terrorism Index, is the world’s most affected by terrorism after Iraq and Afghanistan.

Authorities have beefed-up security in the face of the school carnage, and in response to threats of similar attacks from the Taliban. Checkpoints have been stepped up on roads into the city. Surprise swoops netted 1,200…

Seven armed militants attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar on Tuesday. They jumped a wall, and systematically shot at students – children – in classroom after classroom. The current death toll is at 148, but the numbers continue to rise.

A spokesperson for the Pakistani Taliban called in gleefully once the attack had begun. He said it was in response to the military’s continuing operation against militants in North Waziristan. “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. “We want them to feel the pain.”

The children’s parents and the military are feeling the pain, so is the nation, and so are other nations, because the assault on people’s collective conscience by the mass murder of children is not confined to institutions or nations.